I'll Be The Judge Of That
Lately I've been asked to judge a number of competitions. This week I've been selecting photographs for a photography competition and I'm also one of several judges for the song-writing competition.
In both case I protested to the organisers that I know very little about either photography of song-writing. In both cases they dismissed such protests and said something along the lines that they were keen on the amateur point of view.
It has been good fun, mind you. For the photography competition I only had to make a choice from a shortlist of eight images. I chose two that I thought told a story.
The Burnsong process is more complicated. The competiton attract hundreds of entries, but, in the early stages, each judge is given five CDs and asked to listen to just one hundred different tracks. I started this two weeks ago, made my initial shortlist of ten songs and have spent this week listening to those again and writing up my reasons for each choice .
There have been some wonderful songs on those CD's and I just hope most of my final choices make it through to the next stage.
I'll tell you more when I'm allowed to reveal all.
